What Suvidha says about us

The West Bengal government has introduced the Suvidha tax of around Nu 5,000 for Bhutanese and other trucks exporting goods to Bangladesh.

While it is the business of Indian states to charge levies on its trucks, it comes as a matter of surprise that such a tax is being imposed on Bhutanese exports to Bangladesh.

The root of the problem seems to be a revenue dispute between the central government in New Delhi and state government in West Bengal due to which the latter has resorted to such measures to raise revenue.

However, whatever the reason it does not make sense to drag a friendly foreign country in between.

In world history countries have fought wars to protect their trade routes, but Bhutan has been a silent spectator to our exports to Bangladesh either being cut off or becoming reduced due to the Suvidha tax.

Government ministries for a while were content to try and let local bodies solve the matter or pass the matter to each other.

No government minister or senior official has even bothered to take an official trip to Kolkata and try and resolve the issue.

The local export association in Bhutan has been making some noise, but has not been organized and articulate enough to make an impact. This paper had to spend two days to try and contact its secretarial head.

This is while the boulder industry is on the ropes and the Suvidha is eating into the profitability of our other exports to Bangladesh like minerals, cash crops etc.

Bangladesh is the only country with which we have a positive trade surplus but Kolkata seems intent to take an unfair portion of the pie.

We like to ridicule Nepal’s less sophisticated officials, but it is telling that West Bengal is not imposing the same tax on a route used by Nepalese trucks. They perhaps know that Nepal would raise hell.

Bhutan has lost a lot in terms of traditional trading opportunities due to the closure of the northern border, and now it looks like the southern border is also becoming difficult.

There is no friendship in trade.
Cornelius Vanderbilt